to disfigure his maxims with ridiculous spelling in order to popularize them and make them bring a living price.  It did not matter much with Nasby’s work.  An assumed illiteracy belonged with the side of life which he presented; but it is pathetic now to consider some of the really masterly sayings of Josh Billings presented in that uncouth form which was regarded as a part of humor a generation ago.  Even the aphorisms that were essentially humorous lose value in that degraded spelling.

“When a man starts down hill everything is greased for the occasion,” could hardly be improved upon by distorted orthography, and here are a few more gems which have survived that deadly blight.

“Some folks mistake vivacity for wit; whereas the difference between vivacity and wit is the same as the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.”

“Don’t take the bull by the horns-take him by the tail; then you can let go when you want to.”

“The difficulty is not that we know so much, but that we know so much that isn’t so.”

Josh Billings, Nasby, and Mark Twain were close friends.  They had themselves photographed in a group, and there was always some pleasantry going on among them.  Josh Billings once wrote on “Lekturing,” and under the head of “Rule Seven,” which treated of unwisdom of inviting a lecturer to a private house, he said: 

Think of asking Mark Twain home with yu, for instance.  Yure good wife has put her house in apple-pie order for the ockashun; everything is just in the right place.  Yu don’t smoke in yure house, never.  Yu don’t put yure feet on the center-table, yu don’t skatter the nuzepapers all over the room, in utter confushion:  order and ekonemy governs yure premises.  But if yu expeckt Mark Twain to be happy, or even kumfortable yu hav got to buy a box of cigars worth at least seventeen dollars and yu hav got to move all the tender things out ov yure parlor.  Yu hav got to skatter all the latest papers around the room careless, you hav got to hav a pitcher ov icewater handy, for Mark is a dry humorist.  Yu hav got to ketch and tie all yure yung ones, hed and foot, for Mark luvs babys only in theory; yu hav got to send yure favorite kat over to the nabors and hide yure poodle.  These are things that hav to be done, or Mark will pak hiz valise with hiz extry shirt collar and hiz lektur on the Sandwich Islands, and travel around yure streets, smoking and reading the sighns over the store doorways untill lektur time begins.

As we-are not likely to touch upon Mark Twain’s lecturing, save only lightly, hereafter, it may be as well to say something of his method at this period.  At all places visited by lecturers there was a committee, and it was the place of the chairman to introduce the lecturer, a privilege which he valued, because it gave him a momentary association with distinction and fame.  Clemens was a great disappointment to these officials.  He had learned long ago that